Organizations Seek to Align Shared Services Centers with Broader Business Strategy: Deloitte's 2013 Global Shared Services Survey

NEW YORK, April 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Organizations continue to view Shared Services Centers (SSCs) as a value driver and are increasingly eager to develop new value processes, according to the results of Deloitte's 2013 Global Shared Services Survey, which revealed that almost 100 percent of respondents (95 percent) believe that SSCs will continue to provide critical and high-value processes for their organizations.

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The global survey of 277 executives shows that companies are eager to take the next generation of Shared Services beyond the traditional space and are looking to expanded scopes, new geographies, multifunctional centers and analytics as key drivers for added value.

"The days of single function optimization are over, and companies with established Shared Services models are now reevaluating their impact and looking for additional opportunities to add value," said Susan Hogan, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Service Delivery Transformation practice leader. "What we're seeing now is a desire to enable business strategies through Shared Services, aligning activities with broader organizational goals."

The following are top trends revealed by the key findings from Deloitte's 2013 Global Shared Services Survey:

Expanded scope
The majority of survey participants (82 percent) plan on continuing to expand the scope of their Shared Services operations by increasing both transactional and advisory processes in their centers. Yet even today the survey shows that organizations leveraging Shared Services are moving upwards of half to three quarters of their full time employees to an alternate service delivery model. Even traditional corporate functions, such as Tax, Real Estate/Facilities, and Legal are moving towards a transactional SSC or outsourced model.

Broadening geographies
Over the past 10 years, we have seen a significant shift in where organizations are locating their SSCs. Traditional, higher-cost source locations, such as the U.S., have understandably seen a decrease in the level of activity for newer centers, while a broadening array of lower-cost locations across the globe have seen an uptick. 

Multifunctional centers
The data from this year's survey shows that there is a trend for organizations newer to Shared Services to move straight to multifunctional centers. Respondents with newer centers had a higher percentage of functions combined in Shared Services and managed as a single organization. Over 50 percent (56 percent) of respondents had Shared Services for multiple functions that were at least co-located if not managed as a single Shared Services Organization (SSO) allowing them to reap the benefits of co-location. 

Shared Services as a strategic asset
Shared Services continues to strive to be seen as a valuable collaborator with the business, versus just a lower-cost alternative.  The survey indicates that while cost competitiveness is a main focus in SSCs today, moving into analytics was noted as the top future goal by over half of the respondents (55 percent). Using analytics, the enterprise-wide SSO can not only reduce redundancy and risk, but can also reap the benefits of leveraging data for better strategic insight and business performance.

"Shared Services is not one-and-done," said Hogan. "Organizations will continue to focus on multi-function and end-to-end processes as they pursue enhancements to their service delivery programs."

About Deloitte's 2013 Global Shared Services Survey
Since 1999, Deloitte has conducted biennial research to help provide insight to organizations regardless of where they are in their Shared Services journey. The survey identifies emerging trends in Shared Services by comparing and contrasting responses from past Deloitte Global Shared Services surveys completed in 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2011 and shares concepts and insights from multiple geographies, industries and revenue bases. The goal of the survey is to provide the latest thinking to help organizations that are beginning their Shared Services journey learn from others and infuse fresh ideas into more mature Shared Services operations. This year's survey includes input from 277 participants from around the globe and provides data for 870 Shared Services Centers globally.  Survey participants represented companies from all sectors with annual revenues ranging from less than $1B to more than $15B. For more detail, please read the Executive Summary.

For additional Deloitte perspective on Shared Services, please visit us at www.deloitte.com/us/servicedeliverytransformation.

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SOURCE Deloitte